That Brit hit piece on Beck is so utterly devoid of merit that I too wonder at its presence here. Has the man ever even watched the show? Certainly he never caught the episodes of GB discussing Father Coughlin!

GM: I watched last night's show; very interesting. I would note that he was careful to say the scenario he was outlining was a worst case scenario. I understand that the world can be a dark, dangerous place sometimes and that sometimes we need to deal with bad people, but this brings with it its own costs.

"I understand that the world can be a dark, dangerous place sometimes and that sometimes we need to deal with bad people, but this brings with it its own costs."

We also have opportunities when we ally with less than free nations. Aside from rebuilding Germany and Japan after WWII, we took a brutal, oppressive South Korea and a Taiwan that had a thuggish strongman running it and grew them into free nations with civil liberties. It took time, but it happened. If we had shunned them, I doubt very much this would have happened.

No intent to pile on here, just offering my own two cents. BD can defend himself, but the question was posed about where the anti-Semitic charge came from and this article (without merit) is at least an example.

"There is no evidence anywhere that Beck has made a clearly anti-Jewish statement. He is a supporter of Israel."

That is the quote of substance from the BD link at the Guardian. The author then reaches for a different conclusion, but I don't see why any reader would based on any information presented.

Quoting the article again: "Beck...did one show called the "Big Lie", which identified numerous people as enemies of freedom. Of nine people given prominence in the show, eight of them were Jewish: ranging from New York academic Frances Fox Piven to Sigmund Freud (and, naturally, Soros). Beck, of course, never mentions their ethnicity."

Once again, the author reaches for one conclusion, but the reader or viewer does not have any reason I see to draw that conclusion. Beck has staff but not necessarily enough to say to someone, get me the religion and ethnicity of each person I am about to slam for their political views or insincerity before I go on the air, and balance it out with different people to attack if there is a problem.

When you are not anti-Semitic, you are sensitive to all the subtleties of avoiding the accusation.

Reminds me of Rush and the attacks of racism. Rush wants nothing more than for people to individually achieve greatness on their own (and for millions to tune in everyday to the broadcast). His closest business confidant is black; his agenda is political policy, not groups. When lies surfaced, they had 'credibility' because Rush is white and Rush is conservative. With that logic, the racist is the accuser.

I was taught the theories of Sigmund Freud in the public sphere. I was not taught about his religion or private life. Was his publicly recognized work tied to his religion? I don't know. Soros to me is a very wealthy liberal activist trying to leverage his wealth and power to elect people all over of polar opposite political beliefs to mine, not a Jew. In private I assume he is Jewish from what is said. That point is completely irrelevant to me and to Glen Beck I am assuming unless you read his mission to be something other than what it is. Soros is tied to moveon.org. That group ran the most despicable anti-American (IMO) ad in my lifetime - General Betray-Us. He can receive hatred back or at least intense, public, verbal political attacks back for the rest of his life and longer as far as I am concerned. To say Soros shouldn't be harshly singled out and criticized or can't handle verbal attacks coming back because he is Jewish, or that groups to be criticized need to have their religion checked first, to me is anti-Semitic.

Reminds of a friend who is Jewish taking some offense quoting McCain in the primaries saying he wanted the next President to be a Christian. What McCain meant was that HE is Christian and supporting himself for President. His best friend politically is Joe Liebermann (Jewish) and that was probably McCain's first choice for President if he could not serve. Again, sensitivities to how that is heard are missed when you are not anti-something. Beck is anti-liberal, anti-Marxism/leftism/socialism, anti big government etc. I don't listen much or watch but I'm sure he singles out Obama plenty too, who is not Jewish, or Hillary Clinton if she had won. And that is not anti-half-black or anti-woman. It is anti- a governing philosophy.

Last week I took to task the large group of rabbis who, after having not voiced similar objections to the equally egregious behavior of liberals, chose to go after Glenn Beck for his use of Holocaust language.

Yesterday, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League (with whom I don't always see eye to eye) took issue with the rabbis' ad in the Wall Street Journal (where the ad originally ran). In a letter to the editor Foxman wrote:

I was surprised to see my name and statements attributed to me used in the advertisement from Jewish Funds for Justice calling on Rupert Murdoch to "sanction" Glenn Beck for his repeated use of Holocaust and Nazi images on his Fox News program.

I want to make it clear, for the record, that I do not support this misguided campaign against Fox News, even though my name was used.

While we have said many times that Nazi comparisons are offensive and inappropriate when used for political attacks, in my view it is wrongheaded to single out only Fox News on this issue, when both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, can share equal guilt in making trivializing comparisons to the Holocaust.

Furthermore, the open letter signed by hundreds of rabbis is a trivialization in itself--bizarrely timed for release on United Nations's Holocaust Remembrance Day. At a time when Holocaust denial is rampant in much of the Arab world, where anti-Semitism remains a serious concern, and where the Iranian leader has openly declared his desire to "wipe Israel off the map," surely there are greater enemies and threats to the Jewish people than the pro-Israel stalwarts Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and Glenn Beck.

Now, Foxman's words were not taken out of context. But unlike the left-wing rabbis of the Jewish Funds for Justice, Foxman has blasted Keith Olbermann, Time magazine, Steve Cohen, MoveOn.org, Huffington Post and other left-leaning outlets and figures.

In another letter to the editor, Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, wrote, in part:

I have no position on Mr. Beck, but I am frankly puzzled as to how he merits so great an expenditure by this group. What a waste of communal resources this represents when there are so many needy people, Holocaust survivors and others. Herein lies the mercy of religious figures--not in politics.

This absurdity and the fact that these rabbis have never seen fit to comment on Mr. Soros's support for entities that have harmed Israel and Jewish interests (and in my view, Western interests generally), force me to speak out.

Elan Steinberg is quoted in the advertisement in his capacity as vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors. He has no more right than I do to speak in the name of the survivors on this topic. I know this because I, too, am vice president of the American Gathering. I also know that in my 30 years of participation in large-scale annual commemorations I have yet to meet a survivor who expressed support for Mr. Soros.

Carried in the January 27th edition of the Wall Street Journal was an advertisement/open letter from four-hundred Rabbis organized by a socialist Jewish organization called Jewish Funds for Justice (JFJ), with strong ties to financier George Soros (the full ad is embedded at the bottom of this page). As discussed the day the ad came out, the rabbis efforts brought shame upon themselves, their holy profession and the entire Jewish people, and even worse have committed a Chillul Hashem (desecration of God's name). A conversation with one of the signers, Rabbi Steven Wernick , the day after my initial post raised more questions (which as of this moment the Rabbi still hasn't answered).

That however, is the not the end of the story. Over the past few days, three of the groups used to corroborate the false charges raised by Jewish Funds For Justice have repudiated the letter arraigned by the George Soros proxy. All three weren't contacted prior to the use of their names, disagreed with the thrust of the letter and were not happy that they were included. A fourth came out and said the letter was too one sided. Not surprisingly the only group/person not raising some objection to the letter has an association with George Soros.

The text of letter/advertisement in the Wall Street Journal offers quotations from outside sources as support of their case against the Fox commentator:

Abe Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, a child survivor of the Holocaust, described Beck's attack on George Soros as "not only offensive, but horrific, over-the-top, and out-of-line." Commentary magazine said that "Beck's denunciation of him [Soros] is marred by ignorance and offensive innuendo." Elan Steinberg, vice president of The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, called Mr. Beck's accusations "monstrous." Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, called them "beyond repugnant." And Deborah Lipstadt, professor of Holocaust Studies at Emory University, says Beck is using traditional anti-Semitic imagery.

The first one to weigh in was Jeffrey Tobin of Commentary who saw the letter as an overt attempt to silence someone with home they disagree politically:

In the body of their ad is a quote from a COMMENTARY Web Exclusive article written by me about Beck’s willingness to raise questions about George Soros’s behavior during the Holocaust. In it I made it clear that while we consider Soros’s political stands abhorrent, his alleged activities as a 14-year-old boy during the Nazi occupation of his native Hungary ought to be out of bounds for his critics. As the Jewish Funds for Justice ad states, the piece said Beck’s attack on Soros on this point was marred by ignorance and innuendo, and I stand by that characterization....

The difference between COMMENTARY and the rabbis who speak in the name of the Jewish Funds for Justice couldn’t be clearer. We agree that Holocaust imagery and related topics ought not to be abused for partisan political purposes, though we have to say in passing that Beck’s idiotic attack on Soros is nowhere near as great an offense as Rep. Cohen’s calling his Republican opponents Nazis on the floor of the House of Representatives. But unlike those rabbis, we do not do so only when the offenders are people we disagree with on other issues. Had these rabbis sought to denounce both right-wing and left-wing figures that have called their foes Nazis or made specious comparisons to Adolf Hitler or Joseph Goebbels, they might have done so with some credibility. But since they have invoked their status as spiritual leaders as well as the prestige of the Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist movements solely to silence a conservative political speaker whom they dislike, they have none.

Yesterday in the Wall Street Journal there were two letters published from organizations named in the JFJ open letter:

I suppose that I am to rest easy now that these rabbis and the individuals they quote in their advertisement find Glenn Beck and Roger Ailes... represent a greater threat to the welfare of the Jews than George Soros. I have no position on Mr. Beck, but I am frankly puzzled as to how he merits so great an expenditure by this group. What a waste of communal resources this represents when there are so many needy people, Holocaust survivors and others.

This absurdity and the fact that these rabbis have never seen fit to comment on Mr. Soros's support for entities that have harmed Israel and Jewish interests (and in my view, Western interests generally), force me to speak out. [my emphasis]

Elan Steinberg is quoted in the advertisement in his capacity as vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors. He has no more right than I do to speak in the name of the survivors on this topic. I know this because I, too, am vice president of the American Gathering. I also know that in my 30 years of participation in large-scale annual commemorations I have yet to meet a survivor who expressed support for Mr. Soros.

Most surprising was the second letter which was from Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, who has often used his organization as an arm of the progressive movement. Foxman defended Beck and Fox News as friends of Israel :

I was surprised to see my name and statements attributed to me used in the advertisement from Jewish Funds for Justice calling on Rupert Murdoch to "sanction" Glenn Beck for his repeated use of Holocaust and Nazi images on his Fox News program.

I want to make it clear, for the record, that I do not support this misguided campaign against Fox News, even though my name was used.

While we have said many times that Nazi comparisons are offensive and inappropriate when used for political attacks, in my view it is wrongheaded to single out only Fox News on this issue, when both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, can share equal guilt in making trivializing comparisons to the Holocaust.

Furthermore, the open letter signed by hundreds of rabbis is a trivialization in itself—bizarrely timed for release on United Nations's Holocaust Remembrance Day. At a time when Holocaust denial is rampant in much of the Arab world, where anti-Semitism remains a serious concern, and where the Iranian leader has openly declared his desire to "wipe Israel off the map," surely there are greater enemies and threats to the Jewish people than the pro-Israel stalwarts Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and Glenn Beck.

A fourth person sited in the letter Deborah Lipstadt, professor of Holocaust Studies at Emory University, said that she didn't disagree with the thrust of the letter but felt it was distorted because of it was one-sided:

I don’t disagree with the thrust of JFSJ’s ad. That said, I do worry that it is a distortion to focus solely on the conservative end of the political spectrum.

During his term in office, President George W. Bush was frequently compared to Hitler. A 2006 New York Times ad from a group called the World Can’t Wait, signed by a number of prominent leftists (as well as five Democratic members of Congress), cited a litany of complaints about the Bush administration’s policies and concluded: “People look at all this and think of Hitler — and rightly so.” British playwright and Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter, who signed onto the ad, went to so far as to call the Bush administration “more dangerous than Nazi Germany.” (Emphasis added.)

Similarly, references to Israelis as “Nazis” and claims that Israel is committing genocide abound in left-wing discourse. Because of their ubiquity, we have almost become inured to the horror of such comparisons.

One need not minimize the danger of Beck’s rhetoric in order to wonder why JFSJ — which has significant credibility among progressives — has not mounted an equally passionate critique of misbegotten analogies on the left. Is this about principle, or is it about politics? Is this about anti-Semitism, or about Rupert Murdoch? (Of course, there are also some conservatives who have no trouble spotting anti-Semitic innuendo except when it is appearing on Fox.)

Rev. Welton Gaddy of the Interfaith Alliance has not commented on the JFJ effort, perhaps because he is so busy. After all the Reverend is also on the Faith Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations an organization tied into George Soros on many levels (Soros is a former board member, his Corporation is a sponsor and one of the council's resident experts, Morton Halprin is also an adviser to Soros' Open Society Foundation).

Despite its best attempts to attack Fox News' Glenn Beck, the vast majority people/organizations cited by the Jewish Funds for Justice as corroboration for their slander have labeled their open letter for what it is, a hypocritical effort on their part and by the 400 rabbis, to exploit the Holocaust for political purposes. I said it before and I will say it again, each and every one of those Rabbis should feel ashamed for their attempt to libel Glenn Beck and Fox News.

Glenn has, how rare, been taking a contrarian interpretation of the events in Egypt. He sees them as the result of a Green-Red alliance dedicated to overthrowing western values world-wide and as the first step of much more to come. He is very emphatic that there is a reason the BO et al (e.g. intel chief Clapper!) are underplaying the true nature of the MB.

I'd be glad to see continuing discussion here of Glenn's ideas this past week and next.

We are looking at protests throughout the Arab world in the coming days. What is the US policy to be?

I begin with a glance in the rear view mirror by noting that we would be in rather good shape right now if the Baraq, Pelosi, Reid, Kerrey, Gore, Clinton, et al had supported Bush and the Neocons's idea of supporting democracy in Iraq and elsewhere. I note the absence of support by Baraq for the freedom marchers in Iran last year (though I note with approval the comments of VP Biden jabbing Ahmadinejad to allow the same freedoms to the people of Iran).

Turning to the question I present, at this moment what makes sense to me is to support freedom and democracy-- for those who support it.

Here's these from that Islamo-Communist conspiracy, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal:=========

As it happens, yesterday was also the 32nd anniversary of the Shah's downfall in Iran. The hard men of Tehran are now seeking to tap into Egypt's revolutionary fervor, hailing Hosni Mubarak's downfall as "a great victory." Earlier on this Islamic Revolution's Victory Day, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on Arabs to "free" themselves from the "arrogant powers" (i.e., the U.S. and Israel) in the spirit of Ayatollah Khomeini.

The regime's words were all about 1979, but its actions suggested their minds are far more focused on 2009. Recall the Cairo-like scenes from Tehran two summers ago, when hundreds of thousands rose up over a stolen presidential election. Their uprising was brutally put down. The frustrations with a crony authoritarian regime that is far more savage than Mubarak's Egypt continue to fester.

Iran this week jammed the BBC Persian TV's coverage of the Egyptian uprising. According to the Guardian, the Iranians acted after the BBC brought together Iranian and Egyptian callers on air to exchange ideas.

Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who challenged Mr. Ahmadinejad for the presidency, asked permission to stage a rally in solidarity with the people of Egypt and Tunisia this Monday. It was a clever idea to get around the long-standing ban on public gatherings. The government turned them down. At least eight opposition activists and journalists have been detained since Wednesday. Clearly the mullahs are nervous about contagion.

=========Hosni Mubarak left Cairo and nearly three decades in power last night, and Egypt erupted with cheers, fireworks and dancing. A better immediate outcome to Egypt's three-week crisis is hard to imagine. Now comes the morning after, and the beginning of another drama for the Arab world's leading nation.

The collapse of the Mubarak regime, wholly unexpected a month ago, offers an overdue opportunity to let Egypt and fellow Arab states catch the global democracy wave that began in 1989. The way to a truly liberal democracy is long and filled with many potential wrong turns. But Egypt starts on it with an enthusiastic mandate for reform, and advantages as well as handicaps.

***Among the advantages, the military council that says it will oversee a transition has had its reputation and popular support enhanced by the uprising. By most appearances, the brass pushed Mr. Mubarak out yesterday, after the Egyptian leader refused to step down in a greatly anticipated speech on Thursday night. He enraged the streets and jeopardized the army's position of neutrality, increasing the chances of violence.

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Zuma Press .Dictators of long standing rarely leave easily, or quickly, and at least Mr. Mubarak left before more blood was shed. His consiglieri, an ashen-faced Vice President Omar Suleiman, read a 30-second statement to announce Mr. Mubarak's departure and the transfer of power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Services. Mr. Suleiman, who was previously expected to take over, may be left out of the transition, too tarnished by the events of the past three weeks to play an effective leadership role.

The military has been the power behind the Egyptian throne since the 1952 coup, and skeptics called yesterday's power shift another military coup. Many other Third World countries have seen generals take over and promise a transition to democracy, only to stay for good. The military has interests that run deep into Egypt's politics and economy, and the generals will want those safeguarded. But the circumstances of this "coup" are unique. The military yesterday promised to honor the people's demands for democracy. The last month was also a good lesson for them that in this century free societies tend to be more stable.

Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, who was Egypt's defense minister, and the other senior officers on the military council can take some obvious steps to build their legitimacy. As soon as possible they should lift emergency rule, which has been enforced since Anwar Sadat's assassination in 1981 and Mr. Mubarak's rise to the throne.

By rising up in January, Egyptians claimed their right to free speech and assembly. Such habits of a free society are worth decriminalizing and promoting. Long stifled by Mr. Mubarak's tight grip, the country hasn't had time to debate and disagree, nurture opposition figures and join political parties.

This transition will take time, a reality acknowledged by many in Cairo's Tahrir Square. The demonstrations were all the more remarkable for throwing up no leader in the mold of a Lech Walesa. Speaking on al Jazeera last night, former U.N. official Mohamed ElBaradei talked about "a one-year transition" to free elections. Before those take place, he said that Egypt needs a new constitution drawn up by a provisional council, including figures from the military and opposition. Ayman Nour, an opposition leader jailed by the Mubarak regime, said that Egyptians waited for yesterday for many years and would be patient. This is wise counsel.

Who knows what leader might emerge. Mr. ElBaradei lived abroad until the revolution started, and Mr. Nour's party lacks deep support and is divided. Marshal Tantawi won good will by appearing on Tahrir Square during the protests.

But the most galvanizing figure of the uprising is the Google executive, Wael Ghonim, who was jailed for a time but emerged with the Nelson Mandela-like message that he sought no revenge against his captors. This, too, is wisdom, because in history's successful revolutions victors have sought reconciliation rather than reprisals. Think the Philippines and South Africa, not France or Iran.

To satisfy the aspirations of this revolution, the political reforms will have to be credible and deep, not merely cosmetic. A Mubarak in new clothing will invite more trouble down the road. A democracy with proper constitutional checks, competing branches of government and the rule of law offers the best insurance against the rise of a different form of autocracy led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood is disciplined and organized and will no doubt fight to gain power. But it's worth noting that the words heard most often from protestors in Egypt have been "dignity," "modernity," "freedom," "jobs." We shouldn't overlook that at this moment the hallmarks of successful societies—democracy and a vibrant free market—appear to have displaced Allah as the galvanizing ideas for the young in Egypt and Tunisia.

Political Islam is so 1979—nowhere more so than in Iran, where an opposition rose up two years ago with the same demands as the Egyptians, only to fail amid a ruthless and violent government crackdown. (See editorial below.) Egypt's revolt should inspire the Iranians anew, and it will if it ends in greater freedom.

The U.S. and Europe can't dictate events in Egypt, but they can influence this transition. America's close ties and $1.5 billion in yearly aid to the military, which has been armed by Washington since the 1979 Camp David accords, will give the U.S. influence with the generals. Another carrot to Egypt's next leaders would be a free trade agreement and open access to the U.S. and EU markets for its goods as democracy advances.

***President Obama spoke for many Americans yesterday by saying that Egypt's nonviolent revolution "inspired us" with "a moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice." He has learned since his embarrassing silence over Iran in 2009. But this is also a day to note that George W. Bush was the President who broke with the foreign policy establishment and declared that Arabs deserved political freedom as much as the rest of the world. He was reviled for it by many of the same pundits who are now claiming solidarity with Egyptians in the streets. We are all neocons now.

Egypt's march toward political freedom is only beginning, and we can expect more drama and disagreement as it unfolds. But this new Egypt is the best opportunity since 9/11 to change the sclerotic Arab world, and it ought to be seized by Egyptians and their friends.

Concerning India, the night he was first showing that "worst case scenario" map, I commented to my son that the India assertion was quite dubious IMO. Last night GB had some comment to the effect that acknowledged the point.

So, anyway, GM, may I ask you to be our intrepid daily reporter of the GB Show?

SIX weeks after that horrific day in Tucson, America has half-forgotten its violent debate over the power of violent speech to incite violence. It’s Gabrielle Giffords’s own power of speech that rightly concerns us now. But all those arguments over political language did leave a discernible legacy. In the aftermath of President Obama’s Tucson sermon, civility has had a mini-restoration in Washington. And some of the most combative national figures in our politics have been losing altitude ever since, much as they did after Bill Clinton’s oratorical response to the inferno of Oklahoma City.

Glenn Beck’s ratings at Fox News continued their steady decline, falling to an all-time low last month. He has lost 39 percent of his viewers in a year and 48 percent of the prime 25-to-54 age demographic. His strenuous recent efforts to portray the Egyptian revolution as an apocalyptic leftist-jihadist conspiracy have inspired more laughs than adherents.

Sarah Palin’s tailspin is also pronounced. It can be seen in polls, certainly: the ABC News-Washington Post survey found that 30 percent of Americans approved of her response to the Tucson massacre and 46 percent did not. (Obama’s numbers in the same poll were 78 percent favorable, 12 percent negative.) But equally telling was the fate of a Palin speech scheduled for May at a so-called Patriots & Warriors Gala in Glendale, Colo.

Tickets to see Palin, announced at $185 on Jan. 16, eight days after Tucson, were slashed to half-price in early February. Then the speech was canceled altogether, with the organizers blaming “safety concerns resulting from an onslaught of negative feedback.” But when The Denver Post sought out the Glendale police chief, he reported there had been no threats or other causes for alarm. The real “negative feedback” may have been anemic ticket sales, particularly if they were to cover Palin’s standard $100,000 fee.

What may at long last be dawning on some Republican grandees is that a provocateur who puts her political adversaries in the cross hairs and then instructs her acolytes to “RELOAD” frightens most voters.

Even the Rupert Murdoch empire shows signs of opting for retreat over reload. Its newest right-wing book imprint had set its splashy debut for Jan. 18, with the rollout of a screed, “Death by Liberalism,” arguing that “more Americans have been killed by well-meaning liberal policies than by all the wars of the last century combined.” But that publication date was 10 days after Tucson, and clearly someone had second thoughts. You’ll look in vain for the usual hype, or mere mentions, of “Death by Liberalism” in other Murdoch media outlets (or anywhere else). Even more unexpectedly, Murdoch’s flagship newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, ran an op-ed essay last week by the reliably conservative Michael Medved trashing over-the-top Obama critiques from Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Dinesh D’Souza as “paranoid” and “destructive to the conservative cause” — the cause defined as winning national elections.

If the next step in this declension is less face time for Palin on Fox News, then we’ll have proof that pigs can fly. But a larger question remains. If the right puts its rabid Obama hatred on the down-low, what will — or can — conservatism stand for instead? The only apparent agendas are repealing “Obamacare” and slashing federal spending as long as the cuts are quarantined to the small percentage of the budget covering discretionary safety-net programs, education and Big Bird.

This shortfall of substance was showcased by last weekend’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, a premier Republican rite that doubles as a cattle call for potential presidential candidates. Palin didn’t appear — CPAC, as the event is known, doesn’t pay — and neither did her fellow Fox News personality Mike Huckabee. But all the others were there, including that great white hope of un-Palin Republicans, Mitt Romney. What they said — and didn’t say — from the CPAC podium not only shows a political opposition running on empty but also dramatizes the remarkable leadership opportunity their fecklessness has handed to the incumbent president in post-shellacking Washington.

As it happened, CPAC overlapped with the extraordinary onrush of history in the Middle East. But the Egyptian uprising, supposedly a prime example of the freedom agenda championed by George W. Bush, was rarely, and then only minimally, mentioned by the parade of would-be presidents. Indeed, with the exception of Ron Paul — who would let the Egyptians fend for themselves and cut off all foreign aid — the most detailed discussions of Egypt came from Ann Coulter and Rick Santorum.

Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator who lost his 2006 re-election bid by a landslide of 17 percentage points, believes he can be president despite being best known for having likened homosexuality to “man on dog” sex. Even less conversant in foreign affairs than canine coitus, he attacked Obama for deserting Hosni Mubarak, questioning the message it sent to America’s “friends.” But no one (with the odd exception of George Will) takes Santorum’s presidential ambitions seriously. Romney, on the other hand, is the closest thing the G.O.P. has to a front-runner, and he is even more hollow than Santorum. Indeed, his appearance at CPAC on the morning of Friday, Feb. 11, was entirely consistent with his public image as an otherworldly visitor from an Aqua Velva commercial circa 1985.

That Friday was the day after Mubarak’s bizarre speech vowing to keep his hold on power. At 9:45 a.m. that morning, as a rapt world waited for his next move, CNN reported that there would soon be a new statement from Mubarak — whose abdication was confirmed around 11 a.m. But when Romney took the stage in Washington at 10:35, he made not a single allusion of any kind to Egypt — even as he lambasted Obama for not having a foreign policy. His snarky, cowardly address also tiptoed around “Obamacare” lest it remind Tea Partiers of Massachusetts’s “Romneycare.” He was nearly as out of touch with reality as Mubarak the night before.

There was one serious speech at CPAC — an economic colloquy delivered that night by Mitch Daniels, the Indiana governor much beloved by what remains of mainstream conservative punditry. But Daniels was quickly thrashed: Limbaugh attacked him for his mild suggestion that the G.O.P. welcome voters who are not ideological purists, and CPAC attendees awarded him with only 4 percent of the vote in their straw poll. (The winners were Paul, with 30 percent, and Romney, with 23 percent.) Indeed, Daniels couldn’t even compete with the surprise CPAC appearance of Donald Trump, a sometime Democrat whose own substance-free Obama-bashing oration drew an overflow crowd. Apparently few at CPAC could imagine that Trump might be using them to drum up publicity for his own ratings-challenged television show, “Celebrity Apprentice,” which returns in just two weeks — or that he had contributed $50,000 to the Chicago mayoral campaign of no less an Obama ally than Rahm Emanuel.

THE G.O.P. has already reached its praying-for-a-miracle phase — hoping some neo-Reagan will emerge to usurp the tired field. Trump! Thune! T-Paw! Christie! Jeb Bush! Soon it’ll be time for another Fred Thompson or Rudy groundswell. But hardly had CPAC folded its tent than a new Public Policy Polling survey revealed where the Republican base’s heart truly remains — despite the new civility and the temporary moratorium on the term “job-killing.” The poll found that 51 percent of G.O.P. primary voters don’t believe that the president was born in America and that only 28 percent do. (For another 21 percent, the jury is still out, as it presumably is on evolution as well.)

The party leadership is no less cowed by that majority today than it was pre-Tucson. That’s why John Boehner, appearing on “Meet the Press” last weekend, stonewalled David Gregory’s repeated queries asking him to close the door on the “birther” nonsense. (“It’s not my job to tell the American people what to think,” Boehner said.) The power of the G.O.P.’s hard-core base may also yet deliver a Palin comeback no matter what the rest of the country thinks of her. In the CNN poll nearly two weeks after Tucson, Republicans still gave her a 70 percent favorable approval rating, just behind Huckabee (72 percent) and ahead of Romney (64 percent).

An opposition this adrift from reality — whether about Obama’s birth certificate, history unfolding in the Middle East or the consequences of a federal or state government shutdown — is a paper tiger. It’s a golden chance for the president to seize the moment. What we don’t know is if he sees it that way. As we’ve learned from his track record both in the 2008 campaign and in the White House, he sometimes coasts at these junctures or lapses into a pro forma bipartisanship that amounts, for all practical purposes, to inertia.

Obama’s outspokenness about the labor battle in Wisconsin offers a glimmer of hope that he might lead the fight for what many Americans, not just Democrats, care about — from job creation to an energy plan to an attack on the deficit that brackets the high-end Bush-era tax cuts with serious Medicare/Medicaid reform and further strengthening of the health care law. Will he do so? The answer to that question is at least as mysterious as the identity of whatever candidate the desperate G.O.P. finds to run against him.

The main topic was the creepy parallels between the bible's description of the anti-christ and the muslim description of their mahdi. More of what have some have called a mormon version of the "700 Club" rather than hard news, IMHO.

The main topic was the creepy parallels between the bible's description of the anti-christ and the muslim description of their mahdi. More of what have some have called a mormon version of the "700 Club" rather than hard news, IMHO.

"Obama’s outspokenness about the labor battle in Wisconsin offers a glimmer of hope that he might lead the fight for what many Americans, not just Democrats, care about — from job creation to an energy plan to an attack on the deficit that brackets the high-end Bush-era tax cuts with serious Medicare/Medicaid reform and further strengthening of the health care law."

Frank Rich is nuts. "many Americans" are for the labor battle in Wisconsin??? Oh really? So he thinks most Americans are for bailing out government unions benefits, pensions and fully covered health care with their hard earned money?

On job creation Obama gets an F.

On energy plan, Obama is doing everything to weaken the US. 50Bill for a couple of train tracks?

Serious MeidcareMedicaid reform. First the Dems say that can't be touched and that is obviously why Obama and MSM jornolists are hoping the Repubs will make bold moves - so the ONE can demagogue them to death till his election.

Rich is a typical liberal. Still dreaming that most Americans are for progressivism. This country is still right of center - not way to the left.

Although I find GB's take on the events in the Arab world to be very worthwhile, for the record I would like to register a complaint.

It is well-known that many in the Arab world use the word "genocide" as much as they can so as to obscure the true genocide that was attempted, and is intended, for Jews. Sometimes too, it is just a matter of melodrama.

Whatever the case, someone in Libya this week, either a soldier or a defecting diplomat, spoke of Kadaffy attempting genocide; as murderous as what Kaddaffy Duck is trying to do may be, is he really trying to wipe out a people? I think not.

Yet GB has taken up the word "genocide" in his description of what is going on, as in "Why didn't BO take the time to do XYZ to help stop the genocide in Libya?"

This devalues the word, a word whose meaning should be respected and protected.

gen·o·cide /ˈdʒɛnəˌsaɪd/ Show Spelled[jen-uh-sahyd] Show IPA–nounthe deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. Although horrific, I don't think what is happening in Libya qualifies.

Lawrence of MSNBC has been crusading against Beck. Apparantly Beck said a few things about the reformed rabbies who critcized him. I am not that familiar with the whole thing. Rachel who disappeared from this board after her post about Beck and Rabbie complainst and I came back and criticized Soros would probably find this apology inadaquate. I am not sure what to say specifically on the issue of Beck on this though I stand by my comments on Soros. As for criticizing Obama on not speaking out enough ON Ghaddafi I think this wrong headed and political. There are thousands of Americans trapped in Libya and their lives are at stake. It is not a leap to worry that US over - condemnation could cost them their lives.

I almost forgot how the Pundit Right smacked down Glenn Beck over his wholly rational concern that out of Tahrir Square a new caliphate might arise in the Islamic world until I read William Kristol's op-ed this week.

Earlier this month, Weekly Standard editor and Fox analyst Kristol had led off the anti-Beck attack with a heated column accusing Beck of "hysteria" for his "rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East" and connections to the American Left. Kristol was seconded by National Review editor Rich Lowry. The New York Times' David Brooks entered the debate lambasting Beck for his "delusional ravings about the caliphate coming back" while "the conservative establishment" saw Mubarak's fall as "a fulfillment of Ronald Reagan's democracy dream." (Count me out.)

For the next week or so, taunting "delusional" Beck became a regular feature on cable TV. The Pundit Left congratulated the responsible Right for "addressing" the Beck "problem." And maybe a solution was near. "I've heard, from more than a couple of conservative sources, that prominent Republicans have approached Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes about the potential embarrassment that the paranoid-messianic rodeo clown may bring upon their brand," Time's Joe Klein blogged. "I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a mirror-Olbermann situation soon."

Somehow it all slipped my mind.

And then I read Kristol's Wednesday lament in the Washington Post over what he sees as President Obama's dithering over what he also sees as "Arab spring." This is a jarringly dainty euphemism for a blur of regional events that now includes: the triumphal return to Egypt of the poisonous Yusef al Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood's favorite cleric who just drew 2 million Egyptians back to Tahrir Square where he prayed for the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem; panicky EU promises of billions of dollars in aid (protection money?) to its "Southern neighborhood"; emergency preparations for as many as 300,000 Islamic "migrants" washing up on just Italy's shores any day. By the way, one disastrous effect of mass Islamic immigration (hijra) to Europe to date may be gleaned from the current political climate in which a new edition of Jean Raspail's 1973 novel "Camp of the Saints," the prophetic account of France's inability to survive massive Third World immigration, is expected to land the 85-year-old author and his publisher in French court on "hate speech" charges.

But I digress, sort of. What is noteworthy about the beef against Beck is the rock-hard certitude with which his critics, Right and Left, dismiss the caliphate concept as though it were a mythological beast, not a historical system of Islamic governance still revered and yearned for by most Muslims. Speaking of Tahrir Square, a 2007 University of Maryland/WorldOpinon poll indicated that 74 percent of Egyptians favor "strict Shariah," while 67 percent favor a "caliphate" uniting all of Islam.

But woe to anyone who takes notice. Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, for example, was recently accused on a noted blog of "(slinging) caliphate tripe" when Ferguson pointed out that the Muslim Brotherhood "remains by far the best organized opposition force in the country, and wholly committed to the restoration of the caliphate and the strict application of Shariah." "Hilariously stupid" was the not-so-hilariously stupid comment.

But even if "Arab spring" should fail, Kristol writes, "there would be still be a case, for reasons of honor and duty ... to stand with the opponents of tyranny." Doing so, he continues, would not only "vindicate American principles and mean a gain for American interests but because we claim those American principles to be universal principles."

Here is what is "delusional": the belief that American principles -- freedom of religion, freedom of speech, equality before the law -- have a natural place as "universal principles" in a culture grounded in Shariah principles. This is the pure fantasy that has driven our foreign policy through a decade of "nation-building" wars. Meanwhile, the only way I know how to get to anything you might call "universal principles" into the Islamic world is through the establishment of ... a caliphate=========Marc: So, what does she propose? What does Beck propose? What do we propose?

For one possible course of action I duplicate this from the Islam and Theocracy thread:

===========By BARI WEISS For 18 days, the people of Cairo massed in Tahrir Square to bring down their pharaoh. Many carried signs: "Mubarak: shift + delete," "Forgive me God, for I was scared and kept quiet," or simply "Go Away." Barbara Ibrahim, a veteran professor at the American University in Cairo, wore large photographs of her husband—Egypt's most famous democratic dissident—as a makeshift sandwich board.

Her husband, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, couldn't be there. After being imprisoned and tortured by the Mubarak regime from 2000 to 2003, he went into a sort of exile, living and teaching abroad. But the day Hosni Mubarak gave up power, Feb. 11, Mr. Ibrahim hopped a plane from JFK International. Landing in his native Cairo, he went directly to the square.

"It was just like, how do you say, the day of judgment," Mr. Ibrahim says. "The way the day of judgment is described in our scripture, in the Quran, is where you have all of humanity in one place. And nobody recognizes anybody else, just faces, faces."

And what faces they were: bearded, shorn, framed by hijabs, young, old—and at one point even a bride and groom. "The spirit in the square was just unbelievable," says Mr. Ibrahim, whose children and grandchildren were among the masses. "These people, these young people, are so empowered. They will never be cowed again by any ruler—at least for a generation."

For the 72-year-old sociologist, the revolution against Hosni Mubarak has been many years in the making. His struggle began 10 years ago with a word: jumlukiya. A combination of the Arabic words for republic (jumhuriya) and monarchy (malikiya), the term was coined by Mr. Ibrahim to characterize the family dynasties of the Mubaraks of Egypt and the Assads of Syria.

He first described jumlukiya on television during the June 2000 funeral of Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad. Then he wrote about it in a magazine article that "challenged all the autocrats of the region to open up and have a competitive election."

The magazine appeared on the morning of June 30, 2000. But it vanished from Egyptian newsstands by midday. By midnight, Mr. Ibrahim was arrested at his home. "Then began my confrontation with the Mubarak regime—the trials, and three year imprisonment, and the defamation, all of that. That was the beginning."

Not a month before, he had written a speech about women's rights for Mr. Mubarak's wife Suzanne—Mr. Ibrahim had been her thesis adviser in the 1970s at the American University in Cairo, when her husband was vice president to Anwar Sadat. None of it mattered. In the end, some 30 people connected to Mr. Ibrahim's Ibn Khaldun Center—the Muslim world's leading think tank for the study of democracy and civil society—were rounded up.

Most were ultimately released. But Mr. Ibrahim was tried in a cage within a courtroom, sentenced for "defaming" Egypt (criticizing Mr. Mubarak) and "embezzlement" (for accepting a grant to conduct election monitoring through his center). His stints in prison—always in solitary confinement and, for a period, enduring sleep deprivation and water torture—left him with a serious limp. The former runner now relies on a cane.

Yet he believes that his case helped create the atmosphere for this year's uprising. "It started as a series of challenges with individuals. With me, with [liberal opposition leader] Ayman Nour . . . What you saw is the accumulation of all these incremental steps that have taken place in the past 10 years," he says.

"But to give credit where it is due," Mr. Ibrahim adds, "the younger generation was more innovative and far more clever than we were by using the technology at their disposal. These guys discovered the tools that could not be combated by the government." He notes that many of them, like Wael Ghonim from Google, operated from outside of Egypt. "That's something new."

With elections set for September, the most urgent question facing Egypt is how to structure the democratic process—and how dominant the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood may become. In a 2005 election, the Brotherhood won 20% of the seats in parliament. According to the Ibn Khaldun Center's research, the group could earn about 30% in an upcoming vote.

Mr. Ibrahim thinks that holding elections six months from now is "not wise." If he had his druthers, it would be put off for several years to allow alternative groups to mature. Still, he insists that the Brothers—some of whom he knows well from prison, including senior leader Essam el-Erian—are changing.

"They did not start this movement, nor were they the principal actors, nor were they the majority," he says. When they showed up in Tahrir Square on the fourth day of the protests, most were members of the group's young guard. Mr. Ibrahim points out that they didn't use any Islamist slogans. "Their famous slogan is 'Islam is the solution.' They use that usually in elections and marches. But they did not." This time, they chose "Religion is for God, country is for all." That slogan dates to 1919 and Egypt's secular nationalist movement.

What's more, some Brothers carried signs depicting the crescent and the cross together. "One of the great scenes was of young Copts [Christians], boys and girls, bringing water for the Muslim brothers to do their ablution, and also making a big circle—a temporary worship space—for them. And then come Sunday, the Muslims reciprocated by allowing space for the Copts to have their service. That of course was very moving. "

Maybe so. But this week Muslim Brotherhood member Mohsen Radi declared that the group finds it "unsuitable" for a Copt or a woman to hold a high post like the presidency. Then there's the Brotherhood's motto: "'Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." Looking around Egypt's neighborhood, it's not hard to guess what life would be like for Coptic Christians, let alone women, under a state guided by Quranic Shariah law.

"That's still their creed and their motto," Mr. Ibrahim says. "What they have done is to lower that profile. Not to give it up, but to lower it." He adds that the Brothers have promised not to run a candidate for the presidency for the next two election cycles.

To skeptics like me, such gestures seem like opportunism—superficial ploys aimed at winning votes, not a genuine transformation. I press Mr. Ibrahim and he insists that the younger guard is evolving, and that they are "fairly tolerant and enlightened." Enlightened seems a stretch, but nevertheless, what other option is there? Banning the Brotherhood, as the Mubarak regime did, is a nonstarter.

If Mr. Ibrahim is a fundamentalist about anything, it's democracy. And his hope is that participating in the democratic process will liberalize the Muslim Brothers over the long term. They "have survived for 80 years, and one mechanism for survival is adaptation," he says. "If the pressure continues, by women and by the middle class, they will continue to evolve. Far from taking their word, we should keep demanding that they prove that they really are pluralistic, that they are not going to turn against democracy, that they are not going to make it one man, one vote, one time."

He compares the Brothers to the Christian Democrats in Western Europe after World War II. "They started with more Christianity than democracy 100 years ago. Now they are more democracy than Christianity." True, but the Christian Democrats never embraced violent radicalism in the way the Muslim Brotherhood has.

Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP)—formerly the Virtue Party—is a more recent model. "The Muslim Brothers seem to be moving in the same direction," he says.

That would probably be a best case, but it too is problematic. The AKP—and, by extension, contemporary Turkey—is democratic but hardly liberal. Over the past decade, it has dramatically limited press freedom, stoked anti-Semitism, supported Hamas, and defended murderous figures like Sudan's Omar al-Bashir.

Still, the Turkish scenario is far better than the Iranian one—the hijacking of Egypt's revolution by radical clerics like Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who returned from Qatar to Cairo last week. For his part, Mr. Ibrahim doesn't think that Mr. Qaradawi—a rock-star televangelist with an Al Jazeera viewership of some 60 million—is positioned to dominate the new Egypt as Ayatollah Khomeini dominated post-1979 Iran.

Mr. Qaradawi had messages of Muslim-Christian unity for the hundreds of thousands who heard him preach in the square. But about Jews, he has said that Hitler "managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers [Muslims]."

When I asked Mr. Ibrahim about the scourge of anti-Semitism in the Middle East generally, he's dismissive. "Have you seen any pogroms in Morocco or Tunisia or Egypt?" he asks rhetorically. As I point out, though, the Arab Middle East has had a negligible Jewish population since 1948, when roughly 800,000 Jews were expelled. It's hard to carry out a pogrom when Jews aren't around.

So what if the Brothers prove increasingly radical, not moderate? "I would struggle against them. . . . As a democrat and as a human rights activist I would fight, just as I fought Mubarak, like I fought Nasser. All my life I've been fighting people who do not abide by human rights and basic freedoms."

Might he run for political office when his professorship at New Jersey's Drew University ends in May? "I'm 72 years old. And I'd really like to see a younger generation." But, he adds, "in politics you never say no."

"I am more interested in having the kind of presidential campaign similar to what you have here or in Western Europe. . . . That's part of creating or socializing our people into pluralism—to see it at work, to have debates, to have a free media," he says.

One political role he's already playing is as an informal adviser to Obama administration officials, his friends Michael McFaul and Samantha Power, scholars who serve on the National Security Council staff. But he doesn't mince words about Mr. Obama's record so far. The president "wasted two and a half years" cozying up to dictators and abandoning dissidents, he says. "Partly to distance himself from Bush, democracy promotion became a kind of bad phrase for him." He also made the Israeli-Palestinian conflict his top priority, at the expense of pushing for freedom. "By putting the democracy file on hold, on the back burner, he did not accomplish peace nor did he serve democracy," says Mr. Ibrahim.

'Dislikable as [President Bush] may have been to many liberals, including my own wife, we have to give him credit," says Mr. Ibrahim. "He started a process of some conditionality with American aid and American foreign policy which opened some doors and ultimately was one of the building blocks for what's happening now." That conditionality extended to Mr. Ibrahim: In 2002, the Bush administration successfully threatened to withhold $130 million in aid from Egypt if Mr. Mubarak didn't release him.

So what should the White House do? "Publicly endorse every democratic movement in the Middle East and offer help," he says. The least the administration can do is withhold "aid and trade and diplomatic endorsement. Because now the people can do the job. America doesn't have to send armies and navies to change the regimes. Let the people do their change."

We are stuck with trying to find the least sh*tty option. There are no good options. We can't lose Saudi, no matter what. Losing Jordan would be very bad. We use every carrot and stick we have and turn a blind eye to some ugly things that these countries do for internal security, just as we most always have.

Overall, what is to be avoided is the "Six Day War, Pt. II Israel vs. the troops of the new caliphate", as well as the aforementioned formation of Sharia-PEC.

I thought GB did a good job of summarizing the possible 3 point attack plan:

a)getting lots of money with the manipulation of the oil market in 2007-2008b) naked bear raids on Bear Stearns and Lehman and the intended direconsequences thereto which nearly occurred according to somec) the intention to finish off the dollar as an international currency.

Re 2: The AFL-CIO is a socialist organization, so too many others with whom the police are standing with regard to matters in WI. By allowing commies like VJ to participate, the Fraternal Order of Police et al are lending their patina of respectability to them.

4: VJ et al have infiltrated NY State school books and are using them to spread the socialist message.

and from GB's email today:

5: In a very candid interview, President Obama said that 'race is still an issue' for him and that a 'key component' of the Tea Party is racism. That's quite a claim considering there's no evidence of racism - the best argument supporting that theory is 'President Obama is African American. Tea Parties oppose the President's policies. Therefore Tea Parties are racist. What'd Glenn think of the comments? He explained on radio today.

Not Glen Beck directly, but I have a bone to pick with his radio show guest host Joe "Pags" Pagliarulo yesterday who if understood correctly advocated a ban on speculators making a market for oil futures.

That type of economic illiteracy sets us back centuries, I hope the real host is setting the record straight.

The last time gasoline spiked like this was the Katrina aftermath. By allowing gas prices to adjust upward during a supply interruption, no American went to a gas station unable to buy gas. Instead what they found was no waiting. The scarce resource was allocated to its most valuable use.

My judgment is that a gallon of gas is worth about a dollar including our excessive taxation. The rest is the electoral penalty for allowing these buffoons for all of these years to prevent us from producing quantities of energy similar to what we use. Distorting that argument, blaming the market, to such a vast audience does quite a disservice .

I didn't watch yesterday's show when I saw the host was Judge Napolitano (for the rest of the week too? GB being on a well deserved vacation?) I like Napolitano just fine, indeed I like him a lot sometimes, but there are times I find him a little formulaic.

Anyway, concerning oil futures: I fully get the logic of market efficiency and futures trading. I also remember wondering WTF was up 2-3 years ago when oil shot to $150 a barrel for reasons that eluded me. As a read around, I ran across a couple of pieces noting that oil futures required only a 5% margin -- which was far less than for stocks (Anyone know what the margin requirement for stocks is?) As such, these articles argued, oil futures were by far the most highly leveraged hot money/gambling play left.

It is not clear to me that such highly leveraged speculation truly serves market efficiency.

Crafty, You make a great point regarding margin. On stocks I believe it is currently 25% overall http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/margin.htm, stricter depending on brokerage account rules. My belief in the right to offer 140 for a barrel in a month means that you in fact contractually have to pay 140 for a barrel in a month, beg, borrow or steal.

If we had responsible supply strategies IMO the natural market spike from turmoil in Libya would take oil maybe from $27 to $28 dollars and we would be begging private companies in Alaska, Florida or California to increase production to cover the shortage instead of the dictatorship/Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - and 'ugo Chavez.